Hannah Karpel-Pomerantz and her wife met as rabbinical school classmates in Jerusalem four years ago, bonding over their love of Jewish texts and rituals. This August, as they began their final year of school, Hebrew Union College splashed the couple across its website in an essay celebrating their relationship.

“HUC wanted to feature me and my wife as a love story — as something that makes the school look good,” Karpel-Pomerantz said. “It signals that American progressive Jewish life has evolved to the point where LGBTQ inclusion is a no-brainer.”

A new national study suggests just how deeply that shift has taken hold: 51% of the rabbinical students surveyed identified as LGBTQ+. It’s an eye-popping finding that provides the first empirical evidence for a phenomenon many in the non-Or

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